Koala ConservationWhy is animal conservation important? Animal conservation is important, because animals are the only mechanism to create biodiversity, which is the mechanism that creates a habitable planet for humans. Without animals, the energy from today’s plants (algae, trees, flowers etc) will eventually reach the atmosphere and ocean, much of it as carbon. The quantity of this plant-based waste is so More and Farming: all landowners within Koala habitat, together, have the opportunity to use this iconic Australian species as a lever to start rebuilding farm ecosystem integrity.
There are about 135,000 farms covering over 60% of Australia’s land mass. Farming is synonymous with rural life and is the political backbone of any culture. So why do its representatives seem to constantly be at war with environmentalists, when the health of the landscape is synonymous with farmland integrity?
Most recently in Australia, fights have erupted over the conservation of Koalas in NSW. Prior to European settlement, they were relatively abundant across much of Australia. 8 million koalas were killed for the fur-trade, with their pelts shipped to London, the United States and Canada between 1888 and 1927 [2].
In 2015 there were estimated to be 90,000 Koalas left in the wild. The catastrophic bushfires in 2019/2020 might have wiped out three quarters of Koalas in NSW alone. Today’s populations are fewer than 1% of what they were at European settlement.
“The operation of the Koala [habitat protection] will place significant further unreasonable limits on farming practices, while delivering limited benefits for koala conservation”
Quote from chair of the NSW Farmers Conservation and Resource Management committee Bronwyn Petrie in “Koala policy (SEPP) can be tough on farmers“
Koala conservation and food production
The problem, if any, is that few people seem to be able to convey the relationship between wildlife, ecosystemsHow ecosystems function An ecosystem is a community of lifeforms that interact in such an optimal way that how ecosystems function best, is when all components (including humans and other animals) can persist and live alongside each other for the longest time possible. Ecosystems are fuelled by the energy created by plants (primary producers) that convert the Sun's heat energy More and farm economic viability. We know that animals are drivers for clean water, soil fertility and stable climate and this all connects to agricultural yield. Public policy, koala conservation and farming sentiment, however, aren’t particular cognisant. I fear that many of the prescriptive demands made by our policy-makers are just too constricting and unexplained.
The quote (above) is a classic example of the consequence of this. There has been so little historical dialogue about the relationship between food production and wildlife conservation, it distracts from the real opportunity. This despite many farmers taking the initiative themselves.
The discussion should be about working together for improvement.
Animals are not the icing on the cake. The conditions that gifted soil fertility in the first place, were entirely created by the animals we now persecute, treat as a menace, or “protect” in isolation. We completely underestimate the significance that even individual animals can have on land processes and food.
Declining ecosystem health and farming
Meanwhile, decline in farm viability means “as many as 75 per cent of Australian farm businesses do not generate sufficient returns to meet both personal needs and business growth” [1].
Achieving the transformations necessary … will require as much focus on landscape-scale ecological processes and farm level agro-ecologies as on discrete production practices and technologies [1].
The conservation movement isn’t being much help to itself (or the animals) either. It continuously focuses on animal protection rather than building a case for the inherent importance of animals for food security, which is just one of many biodiversityWhat is the definition of biodiversity? When we ask, what is the definition of biodiversity? It depends on what we want to do with it. The term is widely and commonly misused, leading to significant misinterpretation of the importance of how animals function on Earth and why they matter a great deal, to human survival. Here I will try to More outcomes achieved, through nature-based solutions.
And conservationists can be just as bad at believing animals are pests, because it’s easier to cull, poison and trap, than accept wildlife is essential to fixing the landscape we broke. Unless conservationists know how animals are essential for a habitable Earth, how can anyone hope to achieve nature-based solutions?
Koalas are one animal that is part of landscape processes in Australia. Their massive population decline is already an indication of serious environmental damage and you can’t disconnect these effects from farmland.
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Using species’ potential range as an indicator of conservation importance
A new paper published in the journal Ecological Indicators proposes that we use indices of species’ potential range to inform conservation status (Mason et al, 2021). Findings like these should…
If you’re a farmer who has lost Koalas from your land in the distant past, you can be sure to have lost farm production too. If you’re a farmer who has never seen a Koala but you’re in ideal habitat, then you may be in a predicament.
Koala conservation as an opportunity for farming
What if the very thing you’re scared of, could be what rebuilds your livelihood and enables your successors to have a comfortable life, while feeding a nation? Maybe ask yourself this: can it hurt to try something new?
I grew up around farmland and it staggers me that farmers are still being convinced to waste their future on decades of broken promises from agrochemical companies. Instead, every farmer should be employing ecologists and looking to Animal ImpactWhat is Animal Impact? Without wildlife, Earth would not be habitable for humans, because it's animals that stabilise ecosystems. It’s a fundamental law of nature that animals (and humans) exist because we are the most likely lifeforms to minimise environmental chaos. Animal impact, therefore, is a measure of how much all wildlife is collectively responsible for creating a habitable Earth. The More, to rebuild and preserve the integrity of our land.
Pesticide use only makes Australia’s Plague Locust risk worse!
Koalas are large, mobile animals and their impact on the transfer(of nutrients) the thing that sets animals apart from plants, is that they can move. Some of the biggest migrations on Earth every day, are the movement of insects like caterpillars, from the stem of a plant to a leaf and back, before turning into butterflies and transferring the energy elsewhere. Large-scale migration of grazing animals and migratory songbirds moves More, amplificationAmplification (of nutrients and energy). Animals consume plants and other animals and in doing so, reintroduce important energy-containing nutrients back into the environment, at even higher concentrations and in patches. Amplification of energy is driven by migration and happens at every scale, from insects moving daily in and out of your vegetable patch, to African wildebeest herds and the seasonal More and concentration of nutrientsEnergy and nutrients are the same thing. Plants capture energy from the Sun and store it in chemicals, via the process of photosynthesis. The excess greenery and waste that plants create, contain chemicals that animals can eat, in order to build their own bodies and reproduce. When a chemical is used this way, we call it a nutrient. As we More, is as essential to soil processes as any similar-sized creature. They are largely forest-dwelling and fairly harmless for farmers, which is another reason why it is so strange, that a nation of fearlessly patriotic people wouldn’t want to preserve a cultural icon, let alone the value it could provide.
8 million koalas were killed for the fur-trade, with their pelts shipped to London, the United States and Canada between 1888 and 1927.
The connection of Koalas to farmland would be via the health and integrity of farmland edges, corridors and habitat, providing shade, reduced evaporation and the rebuilding of trophic systems with birds, insects and reptiles, that flow in and out of fields and margins, providing all-important pest-reduction and fertilisation. Birds in particular, are extremely important for nutrient-transfer.
The rebuilding process starts, it doesn’t end, with animals!
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There is no field of dreams without animals to begin with
Science Daily recently published a piece titled “Study challenges ecology’s ‘Field of Dreams’ hypothesis”. The hypothesis, put simply, is if you build a habitat, the animals will come. The article…
If you don’t have abundant bird life on your farm, you should be very worried indeed. If you don’t know what abundant means, that’s a question we need to answer as a nation. Over much of the world, songbirds have declined by over 50% in fifty years, along with raptors and other predators, leading to locust and mouse plagues.
These are all signs of collapse in the integrity of our land, including farmland, and there can be no solution other than to rebuild lost nature. Indexes of farmland birds are one of the indicators the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) uses to assess international progress … because it links to water, food and other basic life support [3].
If your leaders are driving a wedge between you and conservationists, believe that they are selling your business upriver.
Every farmer in Australia should be doing at least cursory bird monitoring. How else can you know that your land isn’t falling into disrepair? More importantly, how can you know whether what you’re doing to reverse that, is working? Just measuring your yield doesn’t signify sustainability. If you owned a shop and didn’t do an occasional stock-take, you’d soon run out of supply before you noticed and your business fertility would decline. As a farmer, what else are you, other than a custodian of land fertility?
If you have Koalas on your land, I’d be willing to bet, your soil health and general farm performance is better than most other surrounding land.
The EU began setting aside farmland to curb overproduction in 1988. Policy reforms in 2013 required farmers to allocate 5% of their land to protected ecological focus areas. Birds, insects and small predators offer natural bio-control of pests. In this way, “rewilded” tracts foster biodiversity while also improving crop yields.
Growing Food and Protecting Nature Don’t Have to Conflict – Here’s How They Can Work Together
Of course rebuilding ecosystems isn’t easy but what’s the alternative? Business as usual is making things worse, not better. Simply using increasing quantities of agrochemicals, genetically-modified crops, larger fields and bigger machinery is not going to improve the situation and in fact, will just cost you more in the long-term.
Farmers are at the front line and better place than anyone, to do something about Koala conservation and farming because it’s in their best interests. But who in conservation science or policy is out there explaining this, before making rules?
“One landholder has seen phenomenal regrowth from the rain we have had recently. His land is covered in koala feed tree species, so they are reserving a 200-acre paddock and letting it regenerate for koala habitat.”
David Carr, Stringybark Ecological
What farmers should be looking for, is support from their leaders, to lobby for investment in nature-based solutions before it’s too late. It takes time and during the initial period of rebuild, you may go through a dip, as things settle back into a rhythm–we are decades behind other parts of the world already. It’ll take effort to experiment and adapt but that’s what farmers have been doing for centuries, which is why koala conservation and farming should be working together.
Our Aboriginal predecessors had been doing it for tens of thousands of years.
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How Aboriginal people made the most successful ecosystems
Humans are animals. It seems such an obvious thing to say but we don’t behave, think or talk as though we believe it. And this has a profound effect on…
If your industry leaders are driving a wedge between you and conservationists, believe that they are selling your business upriver. There is no sense in ignoring the overwhelming evidence that koala and wildlife conservation is good for farming business.
Likewise, there is no doubting that the status of Koalas is an indication of ecosystem collapse and that reversing that, will benefit everyone.
All landowners within Koala habitat, together, have the opportunity to use this iconic Australian species as a lever to start rebuilding farm ecosystem integrity. The outcome would be to reverse serious socioeconomic failures of the past. It might even lead to better health outcomes for farmers, because creating something bountiful and rewarding is a shared value that everyone can feel good about.
Koala Conservation Public Policy Problems
A personal footnote on public policy. Australia’s regulations are extremely prescriptive. For twenty years I worked as a consultant ecologist in various parts of the world. Australia has a stranglehold on ecological restoration and experimentation that results from top-heavy regulations and poor training and awareness of ecosystem processes in its biodiversity departments. Ecological consultants have become more like accountants, implementing costly legal reporting requirements, rather than being empowered to implement skills in habitat restoration and management. Those who create and enforce public policy often lack the expertise to be able to think outside the box and are constrained by their own bureaucracy. Australia desperately needs a rewrite of its conservation agenda, changing from codified prescription, to outcome-driven. The incentives should be to demonstrate positive biodiversity outcomes and to employ relevant expertise.
- Lockie, S. (2015) Australia’s agricultural future: the social and political context. Report to SAF07 – Australia’s Agricultural Future Project, Australian Council of Learned Academies, Melbourne.
- So How Many Koalas Were There? Report by Save the Koala. https://www.savethekoala.com/sites/savethekoala.com/files/uploads/Imagine2016FurTrade.pdf
- DECISION ADOPTED BY THE CONFERENCE OF THE PARTIES TO THE CONVENTION ON BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY XIII/28.Indicators for the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and the Aichi Biodiversity Targets
